‘It is hard to overstate just how sinister the Online Safety Bill is. The gravest threat to freedom of speech since section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which criminalised “insulting words and behaviour”? That scarcely does it justice. Let’s settle on the most serious threat since the proposal to force state regulation on the press in the aftermath of Levison.
The Online Safety Bill, which has already had its second reading in the House of Commons, is intended to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online. If you think “safest” is code for “most heavily regulated” you’re not far wrong.
The Bill will empower Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, to fine social media companies up to 10 per cent of their global turnover if they fail to remove harmful content — and not just harmful to children, which is hard to argue with, but to adults as well.
What does the Government mean by “harmful”? The only definition the Bill offers is in clause 150, where it sets out the details of a new Harmful Communications Offence, punishable by up to two years in jail: “‘harm’ means psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress.”
But, confusingly, it won’t just be harmful content that meets this definition that the bill will force social media companies to remove. After all, this relates to a new criminal offence — and content that meets the threshold for prosecution under this new law will, by definition, be illegal. Notoriously, the Bill will also force social media companies to remove “legal but harmful” content — and exactly what that is, is anyone’s guess. I’m sure political activists and lobby groups claiming to speak on behalf of various victim groups will have a lot to say about it.
The bottom line is that stuff it is perfectly legal to say and write offline will be prohibited online. And not just mildly prohibited — YouTube or Twitter or Facebook could be fined of up to 10 per cent of their annual global turnover for a transgression — so in Facebook’s case $11.7 billion, based on its 2021 revenue.
That’s a powerful incentive for social media companies to remove anything remotely contentious — and they hardly need much encouragement. Facebook deleted 26.9 million pieces of content for violating its Community Standards on “hate speech” in the first quarter of 2020, 17 times as many as the 1.6 million instances of deleted “hate speech” in the last quarter of 2017.
More than 97 per cent of Facebook’s purged “hate speech” in the last three months of 2020 was identified by an algorithm and removed automatically. It’s a safe bet that the sensitivity dials on the algorithms social media companies use to censor questionable content will be turned up to 11 if this Bill ever becomes law.’ More of this article at https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2022/why-i-fear-this-censors-charter/
‘The Online Safety Bill, the most far-reaching online censorship law to ever be proposed in the UK, has been presented to Parliament.
UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, said her aim with the bill was to “make the internet, in the UK, the safest place in the world for children and vulnerable young people to go online.”
However, as with many bills that are positioned as a way to keep children safe, this Online Safety Bill contains sweeping speech restrictions that will affect all UK internet users.
The bill requires Big Tech companies to take action against “priority legal but harmful” content which will be decided by the government. The DCMS Secretary of State has the power to add more categories of priority legal but harmful content via secondary legislation in the future.
According to the Financial Times, this secondary legislation “requires less scrutiny from MPs [Members of Parliament] than the original bill.”
Companies are also required to report “emerging harms” to the UK’s communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom).
Additionally, the Online Safety Bill outlaws sending “knowingly false” communications that are sent “with the intention to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological or physical harm,” requires large social media companies to introduce identity verification tools, gives Ofcom the power to force companies to use “better and more effective” proactive content moderation technology, tasks Big Tech with determining which of its advertisers are pushing scams, mandates that any website hosting pornography put “robust checks in place to ensure that users are 18 years old or over,” and more.
UK citizens who are found guilty of offenses under the Online Safety Bill can be imprisoned or fined.
Not only does the Online Safety Bill contain numerous provisions that can be used to silence UK citizens and punish them for their online speech but powerful “recognised media outlets” are exempt from any regulation in the bill. Some of the outlets that will be getting special carveouts under this bill have even been praised by politicians for pushing for stronger “online safety” laws.
The punishments for companies that fail to censor enough under the Online Safety Bill include having their sites blocked and being hit with multi-billion dollar fines worth up to 10% of their annual turnover. Tech company executives can also be jailed if they fail to cooperate with Ofcom’s information requests.
Despite introducing strong punishments for tech companies that don’t remove enough harmful content, the Online Safety Bill has yet to reveal the categories of legal the harmful content that tech companies will have to target under this bill.
Earlier this week, Dorries said large platforms will be required to remove legal but harmful content “if it is already banned in their own terms and conditions.”
Yet today’s UK government press release for the Online Safety Bill says that the categories of legal but harmful content will be “set by the government and approved by Parliament.” The press release also lists “exposure to self-harm, harassment and eating disorders” as examples of harmful content that online platforms will be required to remove.
The introduction of the Online Safety Bill to Parliament is the first stage of its legislative journey.
Numerous UK rights groups have blasted the Online Safety Bill and warned that it will restrict free speech.
“The Online Safety Bill is set to rip up the rule book as far as traditional British free speech standards are concerned,” Mark Johnson, Legal and Policy Officer at civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said. “This is a censor’s charter that will give state backing to big tech censorship on a scale that we have never seen before.”
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, warned that the bill will have a “chilling effect on free speech.”
“We are particularly concerned that the government has said it will force social media platforms to remove ‘legal but harmful’ content, including ‘harassment,’” Young added. “That will enable political activists and interest groups claiming to speak on behalf of disadvantaged groups to silence their opponents by branding any views they disagree with as ‘harassment.’”
Matthew Lesh, Head of Public Policy at the think tank Institute of Economic Affairs said: “The UK threatening tech executives with jail time is eerily similar to how Russia and other authoritarian countries are currently behaving. It is an attack on free speech and entrepreneurialism.”
Before the bill was presented to Parliament, the UK’s main opposition party, the Labour Party, suggested that it would offer little obstruction to the Online Safety Bill and complained that it hadn’t been introduced fast enough.
Last October, Labour Leader Keir Starmer lamented that it has been “three years since the government promised an Online Safety Bill. Starmer also claimed that “the damage caused by harmful content online is worse than ever” and promised to support the bill if its second reading was brought forward to the end of 2021.
More recently, Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell said that Labour supports “the principles of the bill that is finally being published” and claimed that “delay up to this point has come with significant cost.”’https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-online-safety-bill-censorship-parliament/
Only a simpleton would think the Government could or would keep your personal data safe!! ‘A shocking data breach has resulted in 500,000 QR code check-in addresses being leaked to a public website where the data could be searched and viewed.
The data involved 566,318 locations collected by the NSW Customer Services Department in what has been labelled a ‘massive and dangerous’ violation of trust.
Addresses were not limited to NSW, and included other states and territories if those businesses or the parent organisation had registered with the government to comply with mandated Covid-Safe procedures.
Some of this data included the location of domestic violence shelters, secrete defence installations – including a missile maintenance unit – power stations, tunnel locations, and private addresses. Pretty much anywhere that people were required to check in to track Covid – which was everywhere.
It is such a serious event that lawyers have called to prosecute the government department.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has admitted that his state government is to blame for the unthinkable mistake, saying that the list was ‘uploaded in error’.
If nothing else, it is a lesson about the dangers of data and the blind faith that the government has asked citizens to have in its handling of information.
The government is set to introduce its controversial Trusted Digital Identity Bill shortly which will collect, collate, and share a frightening level of personal information about citizens. A leak or act of human error in this system would be a concern for the safety of citizen identity far greater than the NSW data error.
Perrottet said that he was only told about last year’s QR data leak on Monday, even though it happened in 2021. It has been referred to the Privacy Commissioner, but the real question is how a failure of security on this scale could be made without anybody noticing.
“That was worked through [the] Privacy Commissioner. My understanding is they were satisfied that the matter was resolved and that information was taken down. It shouldn’t have happened,” added Perrottet.
The government did not recognise its error, rather a technology security specialist by the name of Skeeve Stevens noticed that the data was publicly available and alerted experts who then went on to officially notify the government that they had a serious data security issue.
While the data was online, any one could have accessed it – including domestic abuses and foreign governments which is of particularly concern to the now-public military installations.
‘LifeSite was not the only website blacklisted by its web host this week, with free speech social network Gab losing its web host Joyent late on Saturday and being given until just Monday morning to migrate to another host.
whatyareckon 